Showing posts with label Aviation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Aviation. Show all posts
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Not Getting Back In The Airplane...
One of the things that is most painful in life, is realizing new limitations. Tripped out as I am over my bicycle, I must reluctantly admit that I have no business getting back into a cockpit.
I'm too old.
The baseball statisticians, called sabermetricians, track player stats, and note when a player is past his prime. Albert Pujols is beginning his descent. I used to be a pretty good stick-and-rudder guy, but my reflexes and eyesight just won't cut it anymore. Additionally, with all the new restrictions, I can't go buzzing around VFR anymore without interrupting someones fundraiser.
It is very hard to pull over at the next convenience store, to hit the latrine, in a small piston single. Arthur C. Clarke famously said that he would wait for the passenger space service to start, and I wholeheartedly agree with him. :)
Sunday, February 5, 2012
India fireman takes over after air controller no-show
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-16866616
A fireman took over guiding a plane into landing after air traffic controllers failed to turn up for work at an airport in India, it has emerged.
The fireman, named as Mr Basha, helped the Jet Airways flight land at Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh on 9 January.
The plane was flying from Hyderabad with 60 passengers on board.
Tirupati has no approach radar and pilots rely on air traffic controllers to provide runway and weather information and give landing clearance.
Tirupati airport handles only seven flights a day but is the landing point for visitors to the Tirumala temple, one of Hinduism's holiest shrines.
Visual approach
After the air traffic controllers failed to show up for their 07:00 start, airport deputy manager Janarthanan instructed Mr Basha, whose English was described as broken, to operate the radio in the control tower.
Pilots rely mainly on a visual approach to land at Tirupati and Mr Basha was reported to have supplied the support information needed for about 40 minutes before an air traffic controller arrived for work.
Airport authorities have launched an investigation into the incident.
Airport Authority of India regional executive director D Devaraj told the Mail Today: "No-one doubts Basha's intention to help during a crisis. He wanted the flight to land safely. But he is untrained and must not attempt to do the ATC's job. Mere good intention is not enough in this case."
Mr Devaraj told the paper the controller on duty "simply forgot to turn up"
A fireman took over guiding a plane into landing after air traffic controllers failed to turn up for work at an airport in India, it has emerged.
The fireman, named as Mr Basha, helped the Jet Airways flight land at Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh on 9 January.
The plane was flying from Hyderabad with 60 passengers on board.
Tirupati has no approach radar and pilots rely on air traffic controllers to provide runway and weather information and give landing clearance.
Tirupati airport handles only seven flights a day but is the landing point for visitors to the Tirumala temple, one of Hinduism's holiest shrines.
Visual approach
After the air traffic controllers failed to show up for their 07:00 start, airport deputy manager Janarthanan instructed Mr Basha, whose English was described as broken, to operate the radio in the control tower.
Pilots rely mainly on a visual approach to land at Tirupati and Mr Basha was reported to have supplied the support information needed for about 40 minutes before an air traffic controller arrived for work.
Airport authorities have launched an investigation into the incident.
Airport Authority of India regional executive director D Devaraj told the Mail Today: "No-one doubts Basha's intention to help during a crisis. He wanted the flight to land safely. But he is untrained and must not attempt to do the ATC's job. Mere good intention is not enough in this case."
Mr Devaraj told the paper the controller on duty "simply forgot to turn up"
Monday, January 23, 2012
Mystery surrounds Air Force's secretive X-37B space plane landing plan
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46091282/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.Tx1xAPn4V8E
The United States Air Force's secretive X-37B space plane has been circling Earth for more than 10 months, and there's no telling when it might come down.
As of Friday (Jan. 20), the mysterious robotic X-37B spacecraft has been aloft for 321 days, significantly outlasting its stated mission design lifetime of 270 days. But it may stay up for even longer yet, experts say, particularly if the military views this space mission — the second ever for the hush-hush vehicle — as something of an endurance test.
"Because it is an experimental vehicle, they kind of want to see what its limits are," said Brian Weeden, a technical adviser with the Secure World Foundation and a former orbital analyst with the Air Force.
A long mystery mission
The Air Force launched the X-37B in March 2011, sending the reusable space plane design on its second space mission. The X-37B now zipping around our planet is known as Orbital Test Vehicle-2, or OTV-2.
Another X-37B vehicle, the OTV-1, launched in April 2010 and landed in December of that year, staying on orbit for 225 days — well under the unmanned spacecraft's supposed 270-day limit. But OTV-2 has already exceeded that limit by more than seven weeks, and the calendar keeps turning over. [ Photos of the 2nd Secret X-37B Mission ]
Racking up a lot of time in space might be a key part of the current mission, according to Weeden.
"I think they didn't want to push it, just because it was the first of its kind," he told SPACE.com, referring to OTV-1's flight. "But I think that they are looking to push the second one."
The United States Air Force's secretive X-37B space plane has been circling Earth for more than 10 months, and there's no telling when it might come down.
As of Friday (Jan. 20), the mysterious robotic X-37B spacecraft has been aloft for 321 days, significantly outlasting its stated mission design lifetime of 270 days. But it may stay up for even longer yet, experts say, particularly if the military views this space mission — the second ever for the hush-hush vehicle — as something of an endurance test.
"Because it is an experimental vehicle, they kind of want to see what its limits are," said Brian Weeden, a technical adviser with the Secure World Foundation and a former orbital analyst with the Air Force.
A long mystery mission
The Air Force launched the X-37B in March 2011, sending the reusable space plane design on its second space mission. The X-37B now zipping around our planet is known as Orbital Test Vehicle-2, or OTV-2.
Another X-37B vehicle, the OTV-1, launched in April 2010 and landed in December of that year, staying on orbit for 225 days — well under the unmanned spacecraft's supposed 270-day limit. But OTV-2 has already exceeded that limit by more than seven weeks, and the calendar keeps turning over. [ Photos of the 2nd Secret X-37B Mission ]
Racking up a lot of time in space might be a key part of the current mission, according to Weeden.
"I think they didn't want to push it, just because it was the first of its kind," he told SPACE.com, referring to OTV-1's flight. "But I think that they are looking to push the second one."
Thursday, January 19, 2012
More cracks found in Airbus A380 wings
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46053450/ns/business-us_business/#.Txgp1fn4V8E
Airbus said on Thursday it had discovered more cracks in the wings of A380 superjumbo aircraft but insisted the world's largest jetliner remained safe to fly.
The announcement comes two weeks after tiny cracks were first reported in the wings of the 525-seat, double-decker aircraft, which entered service just over four years ago.
Airbus said it was in talks with the European safety agency, EASA.
"Additional cracks have been found and we are working closely on this issue with EASA," an Airbus spokesman said. "They do not affect safe operation of the aircraft.
Two aviation industry sources told Reuters the agency, which is responsible for aviation safety in the European Union, may issue an airworthiness directive requiring checks this week.
Airbus said on Thursday it had discovered more cracks in the wings of A380 superjumbo aircraft but insisted the world's largest jetliner remained safe to fly.
The announcement comes two weeks after tiny cracks were first reported in the wings of the 525-seat, double-decker aircraft, which entered service just over four years ago.
Airbus said it was in talks with the European safety agency, EASA.
"Additional cracks have been found and we are working closely on this issue with EASA," an Airbus spokesman said. "They do not affect safe operation of the aircraft.
Two aviation industry sources told Reuters the agency, which is responsible for aviation safety in the European Union, may issue an airworthiness directive requiring checks this week.
Friday, January 13, 2012
30 years after Air Florida crash, skies safer than ever
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/30-years-after-air-florida-crash-skies-safer-than-ever/2012/01/05/gIQAW0GwtP_story_1.html
Thirty years later, few of the 26,000 passengers who take off from National on a typical day remember the details of the Flight 90 crash. But the people flying their planes do.
“Within the air crew world, this is a well-known accident,” said Jim Hookey, the resident expert on jet engines at the NTSB.
It was not the weight of the ice, the wait to takeoff or the slush on the runway that caused the plane to crash. For reasons no one will ever know, two pilots with little experience in winter weather failed to turn on heating systems that keep the idling jet engines warm.
Without that heat, something — almost certainly ice — clogged engine openings that are essential to determining how much thrust those engines are generating. As a result, the cockpit instruments told the pilots that the engines were generating far more power than they really were.
Because of those bad readings, when the plane failed to gain altitude, the pilots didn’t realize that throwing the throttle open would give them more lift.
“Up to about eight or 10 seconds before they hit the bridge, if they had just pushed the throttle [wide open], they probably would have buzzed the bridge, but they would have made it,” Hookey said.
That lesson, he said, has been learned throughout the industry.
“Crews now are not hesitant to jam the throttle to save the plane,” Hookey said. “There’s probably been a lot of airplanes that have been saved because of the errors that these guys made.”
* * *
Conversation in the cockpit as Air Florida struggles to get airborne:
Pilot: “Come on forward . . . forward, just barely climb. . . . Stalling, we’re falling!”
Co-pilot: “Larry, we’re going down, Larry . . .”
Pilot: “I know it.”
[Sound of impact.]
Thirty years later, few of the 26,000 passengers who take off from National on a typical day remember the details of the Flight 90 crash. But the people flying their planes do.
“Within the air crew world, this is a well-known accident,” said Jim Hookey, the resident expert on jet engines at the NTSB.
It was not the weight of the ice, the wait to takeoff or the slush on the runway that caused the plane to crash. For reasons no one will ever know, two pilots with little experience in winter weather failed to turn on heating systems that keep the idling jet engines warm.
Without that heat, something — almost certainly ice — clogged engine openings that are essential to determining how much thrust those engines are generating. As a result, the cockpit instruments told the pilots that the engines were generating far more power than they really were.
Because of those bad readings, when the plane failed to gain altitude, the pilots didn’t realize that throwing the throttle open would give them more lift.
“Up to about eight or 10 seconds before they hit the bridge, if they had just pushed the throttle [wide open], they probably would have buzzed the bridge, but they would have made it,” Hookey said.
That lesson, he said, has been learned throughout the industry.
“Crews now are not hesitant to jam the throttle to save the plane,” Hookey said. “There’s probably been a lot of airplanes that have been saved because of the errors that these guys made.”
* * *
Conversation in the cockpit as Air Florida struggles to get airborne:
Pilot: “Come on forward . . . forward, just barely climb. . . . Stalling, we’re falling!”
Co-pilot: “Larry, we’re going down, Larry . . .”
Pilot: “I know it.”
[Sound of impact.]
Monday, January 9, 2012
World's largest passenger plane may be unsafe, some say
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-57354488-52/worlds-largest-passenger-plane-may-be-unsafe-some-say/
The world's largest passenger plane may not be sky-worthy, some aircraft engineers in Australia are saying.
The BBC reports that the engineers are concerned about small cracks that have appeared on the wing ribs of some Airbus A380 airplanes, and that they're calling for the whole fleet to be grounded for investigation.
The cracks were found on A380s operated by Singapore Airlines and Qantas Airways, the BBC reports, and Singapore Airlines says it has repaired the wings of two of its A380s.
Airbus recommends that airlines check for cracks but says they present no real danger. The BBC quotes the following from a statement by the company:
"We confirm that minor cracks were found on some noncritical wing rib-skin attachments on a limited number of A380 aircraft. We have traced the origin. Airbus has developed an inspection and repair procedure, which will be done during regular, routine scheduled four-year maintenance checks. In the meantime, Airbus emphasizes that the safe operation of the A380 fleet is not affected."
But Steve Purvinas, secretary of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association, disagrees. "We can't continue to gamble with people's lives and allow those aircraft to fly around and hope that they make it until their four-yearly inspection," the BBC quotes Purvinas as saying.
The world's largest passenger plane may not be sky-worthy, some aircraft engineers in Australia are saying.
The BBC reports that the engineers are concerned about small cracks that have appeared on the wing ribs of some Airbus A380 airplanes, and that they're calling for the whole fleet to be grounded for investigation.
The cracks were found on A380s operated by Singapore Airlines and Qantas Airways, the BBC reports, and Singapore Airlines says it has repaired the wings of two of its A380s.
Airbus recommends that airlines check for cracks but says they present no real danger. The BBC quotes the following from a statement by the company:
"We confirm that minor cracks were found on some noncritical wing rib-skin attachments on a limited number of A380 aircraft. We have traced the origin. Airbus has developed an inspection and repair procedure, which will be done during regular, routine scheduled four-year maintenance checks. In the meantime, Airbus emphasizes that the safe operation of the A380 fleet is not affected."
But Steve Purvinas, secretary of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association, disagrees. "We can't continue to gamble with people's lives and allow those aircraft to fly around and hope that they make it until their four-yearly inspection," the BBC quotes Purvinas as saying.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Airfares With Less Fine Print
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/business/airfares-in-ads-soon-must-include-taxes-and-fees.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all?src=tp
Advertisements that make airfares seem enticingly low will soon lose that asterisk pointing to a dense paragraph of additional taxes and fees that make a cheap ticket much more costly.
Beginning Jan. 24, the Transportation Department will enforce a rule requiring that any advertised price for air travel include all government taxes and fees. For the last 25 years, the department has allowed airlines and travel agencies to list government-imposed fees separately, resulting in a paragraph of fine print disclaimers about charges that can add 20 percent or more to a ticket’s price.
Advertisements that make airfares seem enticingly low will soon lose that asterisk pointing to a dense paragraph of additional taxes and fees that make a cheap ticket much more costly.
Beginning Jan. 24, the Transportation Department will enforce a rule requiring that any advertised price for air travel include all government taxes and fees. For the last 25 years, the department has allowed airlines and travel agencies to list government-imposed fees separately, resulting in a paragraph of fine print disclaimers about charges that can add 20 percent or more to a ticket’s price.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
FAA to issue rules aimed at tired airline pilots
http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/story/2011-12-21/FAA-to-issue-rules-aimed-at-tired-airline-pilots-/52136068/1
WASHINGTON – Nearly three years after the deadly crash of a regional airliner flown by two exhausted pilots, the Federal Aviation Administration is releasing rules aimed at preventing airline pilots from flying while dangerously fatigued.
WASHINGTON – Nearly three years after the deadly crash of a regional airliner flown by two exhausted pilots, the Federal Aviation Administration is releasing rules aimed at preventing airline pilots from flying while dangerously fatigued.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Operation Crossbow: How 3D glasses helped defeat Hitler
Way cool:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13359064
Newly released photographs show how a team of World War II experts disrupted Nazi plans to bombard Britain - with the help of 3D glasses like those in modern cinemas.
Hitler's deadly V-1 and V-2 missiles were early but effective weapons of mass destruction - unmanned flying bombs which brought terror to southern England.
But their impact could have been all the more devastating - costing thousands more lives, lengthening the war and threatening the D-Day landings - were it not for the fact that British intelligence worked in three, rather than two, dimensions.
One of the Royal Air Force's most significant successes came with Operation Crossbow, when it tracked down, identified and destroyed many of the V-weapons which could have prolonged the war.
It did so by meticulously photographing the landscape of occupied Europe in a way that allowed officers to study every contour.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13359064
Newly released photographs show how a team of World War II experts disrupted Nazi plans to bombard Britain - with the help of 3D glasses like those in modern cinemas.
Hitler's deadly V-1 and V-2 missiles were early but effective weapons of mass destruction - unmanned flying bombs which brought terror to southern England.
But their impact could have been all the more devastating - costing thousands more lives, lengthening the war and threatening the D-Day landings - were it not for the fact that British intelligence worked in three, rather than two, dimensions.
One of the Royal Air Force's most significant successes came with Operation Crossbow, when it tracked down, identified and destroyed many of the V-weapons which could have prolonged the war.
It did so by meticulously photographing the landscape of occupied Europe in a way that allowed officers to study every contour.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
TSA: Proper procedures followed in child's pat-down
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/04/12/tsa.pat.down/index.html?hpt=Sbin
(CNN) -- An officer who conducted a pat-down of a 6-year-old girl in the New Orleans airport last week "followed proper current screening procedures," the Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday.
However, the agency said it is exploring ways to "focus its resources and move beyond a one-size-fits-all system while maintaining a high level of security."
Video of the April 5 incident was posted on the internet sharing site YouTube. In it, the girl is seen getting patted down by a female TSA officer.
The child was patted down in order to resolve an issue that arose when she went through an advanced imaging technology, or body imaging machine, a TSA official said.
"TSA has reviewed the incident and determined that this officer followed proper current screening procedures," TSA said in a statement. "However, in line with his vision to accelerate TSA's evolution into a truly risk-based, intelligence-driven organization, Administrator (John) Pistole has tasked the agency with exploring additional ways to focus its resources and move beyond a one-size-fits-all system while maintaining a high level of security.
(CNN) -- An officer who conducted a pat-down of a 6-year-old girl in the New Orleans airport last week "followed proper current screening procedures," the Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday.
However, the agency said it is exploring ways to "focus its resources and move beyond a one-size-fits-all system while maintaining a high level of security."
Video of the April 5 incident was posted on the internet sharing site YouTube. In it, the girl is seen getting patted down by a female TSA officer.
The child was patted down in order to resolve an issue that arose when she went through an advanced imaging technology, or body imaging machine, a TSA official said.
"TSA has reviewed the incident and determined that this officer followed proper current screening procedures," TSA said in a statement. "However, in line with his vision to accelerate TSA's evolution into a truly risk-based, intelligence-driven organization, Administrator (John) Pistole has tasked the agency with exploring additional ways to focus its resources and move beyond a one-size-fits-all system while maintaining a high level of security.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
787 Dreamliner teaches Boeing costly lesson on outsourcing
787 Dreamliner teaches Boeing costly lesson on outsourcing The airliner is billions of dollars over budget and about three years late. Much of the blame belongs to the company's farming out work to suppliers around the nation and in foreign countries Los Angeles Times Online 02/15/2011
Author: Michael Hiltzik
The biggest mistake people make when talking about the outsourcing of U.S. jobs by U.S. companies is to treat it as a moral issue.
Sure, it's immoral to abandon your loyal American workers in search of cheap labor overseas. But the real problem with outsourcing, if you don't think it through, is that it can wreck your business and cost you a bundle.
Case in point: Boeing Co. and its 787 Dreamliner.
The next-generation airliner is billions of dollars over budget and about three years late; the first paying passengers won't be boarding until this fall, if then. Some of the delay stems from the plane's advances in design, engineering and material, which made it harder to build. A two-month machinists strike in 2008 didn't help.
But much of the blame belongs to the company's quantum leap in farming out the design and manufacture of crucial components to suppliers around the nation and in foreign countries such as Italy, Sweden, China, and South Korea. Boeing's dream was to save money. The reality is that it would have been cheaper to keep a lot of this work in-house.
The 787 has more foreign-made content - 30% - than any other Boeing plane, according to the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, the union representing Boeing engineers. That compares with just over 5% in the company's workhorse 747 airliner.
Boeing's goal, it seems, was to convert its storied aircraft factory near Seattle to a mere assembly plant, bolting together modules designed and produced elsewhere as though from kits.
The drawbacks of this approach emerged early. Some of the pieces manufactured by far-flung suppliers didn't fit together. Some subcontractors couldn't meet their output quotas, creating huge production logjams when critical parts weren't available in the necessary sequence.
Rather than follow its old model of providing parts subcontractors with detailed blueprints created at home, Boeing gave suppliers less detailed specifications and required them to create their own blueprints.
Some then farmed out their engineering to their own subcontractors, Mike Bair, the former head of the 787 program, said at a meeting of business leaders in Washington state in 2007. That further reduced Boeing's ability to supervise design and manufacture. At least one major supplier didn't even have an engineering department when it won its contract, according to an analysis of the 787 by the European consortium Airbus, Boeing's top global competitor.
Boeing executives now admit that the company's aggressive outsourcing put it in partnership with suppliers that weren't up to the job. They say Boeing didn't recognize that sending so much work abroad would demand more intensive management from the home plant, not less.
"We gave work to people that had never really done this kind of technology before, and then we didn't provide the oversight that was necessary," Jim Albaugh, the company's commercial aviation chief, told business students at Seattle University last month. "In hindsight, we spent a lot more money in trying to recover than we ever would have spent if we tried to keep many of the key technologies closer to Boeing. The pendulum swung too far."
Some critics trace Boeing's extreme appetite for outsourcing to the regimes of Harry Stonecipher and Alan Mulally.
Stonecipher became Boeing's president and later chief executive after its 1997 merger with McDonnell- Douglas, where he had been CEO. Mulally took over the commercial aviation group the following year and is now CEO of Ford. The merged company appeared to prize short-term profits over the development of its engineering expertise, and began to view outsourcing too myopically as a cost-saving process.
That's not to say that outsourcing never makes sense - it's a good way to make use of the precision skills of specialty manufacturers, which would be costly to duplicate. But Boeing's experience shows that it's folly to think that every dollar spent on outsourcing means a cost savings on the finished product.
Boeing can't say it wasn't warned. As early as 2001, L.J. Hart-Smith, a Boeing senior technical fellow, produced a prescient analysis projecting that excessive outsourcing would raise Boeing's costs and steer profits to its subcontractors.
Among the least profitable jobs in aircraft manufacturing, he pointed out, is final assembly - the job Boeing proposed to retain. But its subcontractors would benefit from free technical assistance from Boeing if they ran into problems, and would hang on to the highly profitable business of producing spare parts over the decades-long life of the aircraft. Their work would be almost risk-free, Hart-Smith observed, because if they ran into really insuperable problems they would simply be bought out by Boeing.
What do you know? In 2009, Boeing spent about $1 billion in cash and credit to take over the underperforming fuselage manufacturing plant of Vought Aircraft Industries, which had contributed to the years of delays.
"I didn't dream all this up," Hart-Smith, who is retired, told me from his home in his native Australia. "I'd lived it at Douglas Aircraft."
As an engineer at McDonnell-Douglas' Long Beach plant, he said, he saw how extensive outsourcing of the DC-10 airliner allowed the suppliers to make all the profits but impoverished the prime manufacturer.
"I warned Boeing not to make the same mistake. Everybody there seemed to get the message, except top management."
The company's unions have also kept singing an anti-outsourcing chorale. "We've been raising these questions for five years," says Tom McCarty, the president of the Boeing engineers' union. "How do you control the project, and how do you justify giving these major pieces of work to relatively inexperienced suppliers? There's no track record of being able to do this."
It would be easier to dismiss these concerns as those of unions trying to hold on to their jobs if they hadn't been validated by the words of Boeing executives themselves. A company spokeswoman told me that it's not giving up on outsourcing - "we're a global company," she says - but is hoping for a "continued refinement of that business model." Yet Albaugh and other executives acknowledge that they've blundered.
"We didn't want to make the investment that needed to be made, and we asked our partners to make that investment," Albaugh told his Seattle University audience. The company now recognizes that "we need to know how to do every major system on the airplane better than our suppliers do."
One would have thought that the management of the world's leading aircraft manufacturer would know that going in, before handing over millions of dollars of work to companies that couldn't turn out a Tab A that fit reliably into Slot A.
On-the-job training for senior executives, it seems, can be very expensive.
Author: Michael Hiltzik
The biggest mistake people make when talking about the outsourcing of U.S. jobs by U.S. companies is to treat it as a moral issue.
Sure, it's immoral to abandon your loyal American workers in search of cheap labor overseas. But the real problem with outsourcing, if you don't think it through, is that it can wreck your business and cost you a bundle.
Case in point: Boeing Co. and its 787 Dreamliner.
The next-generation airliner is billions of dollars over budget and about three years late; the first paying passengers won't be boarding until this fall, if then. Some of the delay stems from the plane's advances in design, engineering and material, which made it harder to build. A two-month machinists strike in 2008 didn't help.
But much of the blame belongs to the company's quantum leap in farming out the design and manufacture of crucial components to suppliers around the nation and in foreign countries such as Italy, Sweden, China, and South Korea. Boeing's dream was to save money. The reality is that it would have been cheaper to keep a lot of this work in-house.
The 787 has more foreign-made content - 30% - than any other Boeing plane, according to the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, the union representing Boeing engineers. That compares with just over 5% in the company's workhorse 747 airliner.
Boeing's goal, it seems, was to convert its storied aircraft factory near Seattle to a mere assembly plant, bolting together modules designed and produced elsewhere as though from kits.
The drawbacks of this approach emerged early. Some of the pieces manufactured by far-flung suppliers didn't fit together. Some subcontractors couldn't meet their output quotas, creating huge production logjams when critical parts weren't available in the necessary sequence.
Rather than follow its old model of providing parts subcontractors with detailed blueprints created at home, Boeing gave suppliers less detailed specifications and required them to create their own blueprints.
Some then farmed out their engineering to their own subcontractors, Mike Bair, the former head of the 787 program, said at a meeting of business leaders in Washington state in 2007. That further reduced Boeing's ability to supervise design and manufacture. At least one major supplier didn't even have an engineering department when it won its contract, according to an analysis of the 787 by the European consortium Airbus, Boeing's top global competitor.
Boeing executives now admit that the company's aggressive outsourcing put it in partnership with suppliers that weren't up to the job. They say Boeing didn't recognize that sending so much work abroad would demand more intensive management from the home plant, not less.
"We gave work to people that had never really done this kind of technology before, and then we didn't provide the oversight that was necessary," Jim Albaugh, the company's commercial aviation chief, told business students at Seattle University last month. "In hindsight, we spent a lot more money in trying to recover than we ever would have spent if we tried to keep many of the key technologies closer to Boeing. The pendulum swung too far."
Some critics trace Boeing's extreme appetite for outsourcing to the regimes of Harry Stonecipher and Alan Mulally.
Stonecipher became Boeing's president and later chief executive after its 1997 merger with McDonnell- Douglas, where he had been CEO. Mulally took over the commercial aviation group the following year and is now CEO of Ford. The merged company appeared to prize short-term profits over the development of its engineering expertise, and began to view outsourcing too myopically as a cost-saving process.
That's not to say that outsourcing never makes sense - it's a good way to make use of the precision skills of specialty manufacturers, which would be costly to duplicate. But Boeing's experience shows that it's folly to think that every dollar spent on outsourcing means a cost savings on the finished product.
Boeing can't say it wasn't warned. As early as 2001, L.J. Hart-Smith, a Boeing senior technical fellow, produced a prescient analysis projecting that excessive outsourcing would raise Boeing's costs and steer profits to its subcontractors.
Among the least profitable jobs in aircraft manufacturing, he pointed out, is final assembly - the job Boeing proposed to retain. But its subcontractors would benefit from free technical assistance from Boeing if they ran into problems, and would hang on to the highly profitable business of producing spare parts over the decades-long life of the aircraft. Their work would be almost risk-free, Hart-Smith observed, because if they ran into really insuperable problems they would simply be bought out by Boeing.
What do you know? In 2009, Boeing spent about $1 billion in cash and credit to take over the underperforming fuselage manufacturing plant of Vought Aircraft Industries, which had contributed to the years of delays.
"I didn't dream all this up," Hart-Smith, who is retired, told me from his home in his native Australia. "I'd lived it at Douglas Aircraft."
As an engineer at McDonnell-Douglas' Long Beach plant, he said, he saw how extensive outsourcing of the DC-10 airliner allowed the suppliers to make all the profits but impoverished the prime manufacturer.
"I warned Boeing not to make the same mistake. Everybody there seemed to get the message, except top management."
The company's unions have also kept singing an anti-outsourcing chorale. "We've been raising these questions for five years," says Tom McCarty, the president of the Boeing engineers' union. "How do you control the project, and how do you justify giving these major pieces of work to relatively inexperienced suppliers? There's no track record of being able to do this."
It would be easier to dismiss these concerns as those of unions trying to hold on to their jobs if they hadn't been validated by the words of Boeing executives themselves. A company spokeswoman told me that it's not giving up on outsourcing - "we're a global company," she says - but is hoping for a "continued refinement of that business model." Yet Albaugh and other executives acknowledge that they've blundered.
"We didn't want to make the investment that needed to be made, and we asked our partners to make that investment," Albaugh told his Seattle University audience. The company now recognizes that "we need to know how to do every major system on the airplane better than our suppliers do."
One would have thought that the management of the world's leading aircraft manufacturer would know that going in, before handing over millions of dollars of work to companies that couldn't turn out a Tab A that fit reliably into Slot A.
On-the-job training for senior executives, it seems, can be very expensive.
United grounds its Boeing 757 fleet
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/02/16/united.757s.grounded/index.html?hpt=Sbin
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Euro Drones
European unity the first victim of killer drones
Reuters News 02/15/2011
Author: Cyril Altmeyer
© Reuters Limited 2010.
PARIS, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Europe needs to co-operate on building unmanned military aircraft or risk falling behind in the race to develop the next generation of jet fighters that may not even be flown by pilots, industry experts have warned.
Despite huge development costs, European nations compete to sell three different types of fighter plane to preserve their national pride and can ill afford to show disunity in the $100 billion market for drones, executives and analysts said.
"Nothing would be worse than having all the European countries ... saying they need roughly similar systems but not avoiding the traps they fell into regarding military aviation in Europe," said Nicolas Chamussy, in charge of drones at EADS's Cassidian defence unit.
France pulled out of the Eurofighter combat jet in the early 1980s to focus on the all-French Dassault Rafale but has failed so far to find an export market for it.
The four-nation Eurofighter is built by EADS on behalf of Germany and Spain, along with Britain's BAE Systems and Finmeccanica of Italy. Sweden's Saab offers the lightweight Gripen fighter.
All three European planes are competing against U.S. and Russian arms firms in a $10 billion contest to supply India.
Now, a similar pattern of shifting alliances is being played out in the battle for control of unmanned technology. It is an important market in its own right and could be a testbed for technology to be used in future generations of fighters.
In early 2009, EADS unveiled a next generation drone called Talarion. But the European defence group is still awaiting a green light from France, Spain and Germany, the three nations who would share the cost estimated at nearly 3 billion euros.
Dassault Aviation and BAE have proposed a military drone to France and Britain under a new cross-Channel defence pact, but without EADS.
"We are pragmatic: it is a European programme, but with two partners," said Eric Trappier, Dassault Aviation's executive vice-president in charge of international.
$100 BILLION MARKET
There is also a debate over whether Europe should try to be self-sufficient or rely on adapting Israeli platforms, such as in the Thales-Dassault bid to build a medium altitude long endurance (MALE) drone to compete with the EADS Talarion.
Most of these players are meanwhile involved in developing a pan-European stealth attack drone called the nEUROn, while BAE Systems has rolled out a prototype of a pilotless military plane called the Mantis, shaped like the predatory insect.
Critics say such disunity and delays are making it harder for Europe to catch up with U.S. manufacturers such as Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Atomics and with Israeli groups such as IAI.
Global spending on unmanned aircraft is expected to total about $103.5 billion from 2011 to 2020, according to data from Virginia-based Teal Group. Over three quarters of this comes from the United States and only 10 percent from Europe.
As with many military ventures, shrinking defence budgets could provide Europeans countries the impetus they need to co-operate on research, Guillaume Rochar, aerospace and defence leader at the Paris office of PricewaterhouseCoopers, said.
"But those are state-of-the-art technologies and nobody wants to show their cards," he added.
France's Defence Minister Alain Juppe is expected to announce his choice of drones by the end of the month and has not excluded buying General Atomics' Predator off the shelf for the country's most pressing needs in Afghanistan.
The implications of such a choice could be far-reaching.
"If France bought Predators today, would this mean it would not develop a combat drone? Rochard asked. "And if France decided not to invest in research and development in combat drones, how could it maintain its know-how regarding fighting jets?" (Editing by Tim Hepher and David Holmes)
Reuters News 02/15/2011
Author: Cyril Altmeyer
© Reuters Limited 2010.
PARIS, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Europe needs to co-operate on building unmanned military aircraft or risk falling behind in the race to develop the next generation of jet fighters that may not even be flown by pilots, industry experts have warned.
Despite huge development costs, European nations compete to sell three different types of fighter plane to preserve their national pride and can ill afford to show disunity in the $100 billion market for drones, executives and analysts said.
"Nothing would be worse than having all the European countries ... saying they need roughly similar systems but not avoiding the traps they fell into regarding military aviation in Europe," said Nicolas Chamussy, in charge of drones at EADS's Cassidian defence unit.
France pulled out of the Eurofighter combat jet in the early 1980s to focus on the all-French Dassault Rafale but has failed so far to find an export market for it.
The four-nation Eurofighter is built by EADS on behalf of Germany and Spain, along with Britain's BAE Systems and Finmeccanica of Italy. Sweden's Saab offers the lightweight Gripen fighter.
All three European planes are competing against U.S. and Russian arms firms in a $10 billion contest to supply India.
Now, a similar pattern of shifting alliances is being played out in the battle for control of unmanned technology. It is an important market in its own right and could be a testbed for technology to be used in future generations of fighters.
In early 2009, EADS unveiled a next generation drone called Talarion. But the European defence group is still awaiting a green light from France, Spain and Germany, the three nations who would share the cost estimated at nearly 3 billion euros.
Dassault Aviation and BAE have proposed a military drone to France and Britain under a new cross-Channel defence pact, but without EADS.
"We are pragmatic: it is a European programme, but with two partners," said Eric Trappier, Dassault Aviation's executive vice-president in charge of international.
$100 BILLION MARKET
There is also a debate over whether Europe should try to be self-sufficient or rely on adapting Israeli platforms, such as in the Thales-Dassault bid to build a medium altitude long endurance (MALE) drone to compete with the EADS Talarion.
Most of these players are meanwhile involved in developing a pan-European stealth attack drone called the nEUROn, while BAE Systems has rolled out a prototype of a pilotless military plane called the Mantis, shaped like the predatory insect.
Critics say such disunity and delays are making it harder for Europe to catch up with U.S. manufacturers such as Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Atomics and with Israeli groups such as IAI.
Global spending on unmanned aircraft is expected to total about $103.5 billion from 2011 to 2020, according to data from Virginia-based Teal Group. Over three quarters of this comes from the United States and only 10 percent from Europe.
As with many military ventures, shrinking defence budgets could provide Europeans countries the impetus they need to co-operate on research, Guillaume Rochar, aerospace and defence leader at the Paris office of PricewaterhouseCoopers, said.
"But those are state-of-the-art technologies and nobody wants to show their cards," he added.
France's Defence Minister Alain Juppe is expected to announce his choice of drones by the end of the month and has not excluded buying General Atomics' Predator off the shelf for the country's most pressing needs in Afghanistan.
The implications of such a choice could be far-reaching.
"If France bought Predators today, would this mean it would not develop a combat drone? Rochard asked. "And if France decided not to invest in research and development in combat drones, how could it maintain its know-how regarding fighting jets?" (Editing by Tim Hepher and David Holmes)
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Worker Locked in Plane’s Cargo Hold Avoids Becoming Passenger
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/us/09cargo.html?_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23
WASHINGTON — Passengers on a US Airways plane ready for departure from Reagan National Airport here on Monday morning apparently alerted a flight attendant to screams and thumps coming from under the floor, which turned out to be a baggage handler who was trapped in the forward cargo hold.
Evidently another baggage handler had closed the cargo compartment door on the first worker, who had crawled into the space, just 37 inches high, while loading baggage.
“The pilot came on and said one of the baggage handlers had been locked in the cargo compartment,” said James C. Goodridge, of West Hartford, Conn., who was on his way home.
The trapped handler was also assigned to operate the tug that pushes the plane back from the gate, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. As workers waiting to move the plane noticed that the tug driver was missing, the co-pilot opened a side window and yelled to the ground crew that someone was “yelling and pounding” from inside the cargo hold, the F.A.A. said.
After the worker was freed unharmed, he drove the tug to push the plane back from the gate, and the plane, an Embraer E-170, left a few minutes early, completing its trip to Hartford without further incident.
A spokesman for US Airways, James T. Olson, said that the airline was investigating the incident and that ramp personnel were told to put safety first. The plane, with 76 seats, carried only 29 passengers, mostly business travelers who did not check much luggage.
“It was a light passenger load, a light luggage load, and there was no condition to require anyone to be rushing,” Mr. Olson said.
In June 2005, a baggage handler working on the same model plane at the same airport was killed when she maneuvered a mobile belt baggage loader up to the fuselage; the vehicle hit the fuselage and she was beheaded.
Two years ago, a JetBlue cargo handler was stuck in the cargo hold of a slightly larger Embraer plane, an E-190, and flew from Kennedy International Airport in New York to Logan Airport in Boston.
WASHINGTON — Passengers on a US Airways plane ready for departure from Reagan National Airport here on Monday morning apparently alerted a flight attendant to screams and thumps coming from under the floor, which turned out to be a baggage handler who was trapped in the forward cargo hold.
Evidently another baggage handler had closed the cargo compartment door on the first worker, who had crawled into the space, just 37 inches high, while loading baggage.
“The pilot came on and said one of the baggage handlers had been locked in the cargo compartment,” said James C. Goodridge, of West Hartford, Conn., who was on his way home.
The trapped handler was also assigned to operate the tug that pushes the plane back from the gate, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. As workers waiting to move the plane noticed that the tug driver was missing, the co-pilot opened a side window and yelled to the ground crew that someone was “yelling and pounding” from inside the cargo hold, the F.A.A. said.
After the worker was freed unharmed, he drove the tug to push the plane back from the gate, and the plane, an Embraer E-170, left a few minutes early, completing its trip to Hartford without further incident.
A spokesman for US Airways, James T. Olson, said that the airline was investigating the incident and that ramp personnel were told to put safety first. The plane, with 76 seats, carried only 29 passengers, mostly business travelers who did not check much luggage.
“It was a light passenger load, a light luggage load, and there was no condition to require anyone to be rushing,” Mr. Olson said.
In June 2005, a baggage handler working on the same model plane at the same airport was killed when she maneuvered a mobile belt baggage loader up to the fuselage; the vehicle hit the fuselage and she was beheaded.
Two years ago, a JetBlue cargo handler was stuck in the cargo hold of a slightly larger Embraer plane, an E-190, and flew from Kennedy International Airport in New York to Logan Airport in Boston.
Monday, December 20, 2010
About Damn Time
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40749964/ns/travel-news/
BRUSSELS — The European air safety agency says it will unveil on Monday a new proposal to combat pilot fatigue, known as the "silent killer" of civil aviation.
The new rules, which come into effect in 2012, will limit flight hours for air crews and standardize the current hodgepodge of national regulations across the continent.
The proposal would bar airlines from scheduling pilots to be on duty — both waiting to fly or in the cockpit flying — longer than 14 hours in a day. Nighttime work hours would be reduced to 12.
The European pilots association said that the agency buckled under pressure from the airlines. The association said in a statement the proposal ignores independent research into fatigue affecting aircrew, which recommends a maximum of 12 hours on duty during daytime and 10 hours at night.
BRUSSELS — The European air safety agency says it will unveil on Monday a new proposal to combat pilot fatigue, known as the "silent killer" of civil aviation.
The new rules, which come into effect in 2012, will limit flight hours for air crews and standardize the current hodgepodge of national regulations across the continent.
The proposal would bar airlines from scheduling pilots to be on duty — both waiting to fly or in the cockpit flying — longer than 14 hours in a day. Nighttime work hours would be reduced to 12.
The European pilots association said that the agency buckled under pressure from the airlines. The association said in a statement the proposal ignores independent research into fatigue affecting aircrew, which recommends a maximum of 12 hours on duty during daytime and 10 hours at night.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Time To Cede Part Of The World To India/China
India to spend over $25 billion to induct 250 5th-gen stealth fighters Economic Times of India 10/05/2010
Author: Rajat Pandit
(c) 2010 The Times of India Group. All rights reserved.
NEW DELHI: India will eventually spend over $25 billion to induct 250 advanced stealth fifth-generation fighter aircraft (FGFA), on way to being co-developed with Russia, in what will be the country's biggest-ever defence project.
With a potent mix of super-manoeuvrability and supersonic cruising ability, long-range strike and high-endurance air defence capabilities, each FGFA will cost upwards of Rs 450 crore or around $100 million.
This will be in addition to the huge investment to be made in co-developing FGFA with cash-strapped Russia, as also the huge infrastructure required to base, operate and maintain such jets in India.
"We are looking to induct 200 to 250 FGFA in phases from 2017 onwards,'' confirmed IAF chief Air Chief Marshal P V Naik on Monday. As reported by TOI earlier, New Delhi and Moscow are looking to ink the FGFA preliminary design contract when Russian President Dmitry Medvedev comes visiting here in December.
Under intense negotiations for the last four-five years, the FGFA project will also figure in the talks between defence minister A K Antony and his Russian counterpart Anatoly Serdyukov on October 8.
Though the Indian FGFA will based on the Russian Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA, which flew for the first time this January at the Komsomolsk-on-Amur facility in Siberia, it will be built to IAF's specifications. It's already being touted as superior to the American F/A-22 `Raptor', the world's only operational FGFA as of now.
ACM Naik said the 30-tonne FGFA will be a "swing-role fighter, with very advanced avionics, stealth to increase survivability, enhanced lethality, 360 degree situational awareness, smart weapons, data-links, high-end mission computers'' and the like.
Along with 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft, which India plans to acquire in a $10.4 billion project, 270 Sukhoi-30MKIs contracted from Russia for around $12 billion and 120 indigenous Tejas Light Combat Aircraft, the FGFA will be the mainstay of India's air combat fleet for the foreseeable future.
Even as the Army revises its war doctrine to factor in the worst-case scenario of a simultaneous two-front war with Pakistan and China, is IAF also preparing for the same?
"Our modernisation plans are based on the four pillars of `see, reach, hit and protect'...We prepare for a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional, multi-front war,'' said ACM Naik.
"But our approach is capability-based, not adversary-specific. Our modernisation drive is in tune with our nation's aspirations,'' he said, adding that India's strategic interests stretched "from Hormuz Strait to Malacca Strait and beyond''.
To a volley of questions on China and Pakistan, IAF chief said, "All neighbours, from the smallest to the largest, have to be watched with caution...Their capabilities have to be assessed...Anything that can upset the growth of our nation is a matter of concern.''
With the new planned inductions in the pipeline, IAF's obsolescence rate will come down to 20% by 2014-15 from the current 50% or so. "But this does not mean that we are not fully capable of defending the country from any air or space threat at the moment...We are,'' said ACM Naik.
Author: Rajat Pandit
(c) 2010 The Times of India Group. All rights reserved.
NEW DELHI: India will eventually spend over $25 billion to induct 250 advanced stealth fifth-generation fighter aircraft (FGFA), on way to being co-developed with Russia, in what will be the country's biggest-ever defence project.
With a potent mix of super-manoeuvrability and supersonic cruising ability, long-range strike and high-endurance air defence capabilities, each FGFA will cost upwards of Rs 450 crore or around $100 million.
This will be in addition to the huge investment to be made in co-developing FGFA with cash-strapped Russia, as also the huge infrastructure required to base, operate and maintain such jets in India.
"We are looking to induct 200 to 250 FGFA in phases from 2017 onwards,'' confirmed IAF chief Air Chief Marshal P V Naik on Monday. As reported by TOI earlier, New Delhi and Moscow are looking to ink the FGFA preliminary design contract when Russian President Dmitry Medvedev comes visiting here in December.
Under intense negotiations for the last four-five years, the FGFA project will also figure in the talks between defence minister A K Antony and his Russian counterpart Anatoly Serdyukov on October 8.
Though the Indian FGFA will based on the Russian Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA, which flew for the first time this January at the Komsomolsk-on-Amur facility in Siberia, it will be built to IAF's specifications. It's already being touted as superior to the American F/A-22 `Raptor', the world's only operational FGFA as of now.
ACM Naik said the 30-tonne FGFA will be a "swing-role fighter, with very advanced avionics, stealth to increase survivability, enhanced lethality, 360 degree situational awareness, smart weapons, data-links, high-end mission computers'' and the like.
Along with 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft, which India plans to acquire in a $10.4 billion project, 270 Sukhoi-30MKIs contracted from Russia for around $12 billion and 120 indigenous Tejas Light Combat Aircraft, the FGFA will be the mainstay of India's air combat fleet for the foreseeable future.
Even as the Army revises its war doctrine to factor in the worst-case scenario of a simultaneous two-front war with Pakistan and China, is IAF also preparing for the same?
"Our modernisation plans are based on the four pillars of `see, reach, hit and protect'...We prepare for a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional, multi-front war,'' said ACM Naik.
"But our approach is capability-based, not adversary-specific. Our modernisation drive is in tune with our nation's aspirations,'' he said, adding that India's strategic interests stretched "from Hormuz Strait to Malacca Strait and beyond''.
To a volley of questions on China and Pakistan, IAF chief said, "All neighbours, from the smallest to the largest, have to be watched with caution...Their capabilities have to be assessed...Anything that can upset the growth of our nation is a matter of concern.''
With the new planned inductions in the pipeline, IAF's obsolescence rate will come down to 20% by 2014-15 from the current 50% or so. "But this does not mean that we are not fully capable of defending the country from any air or space threat at the moment...We are,'' said ACM Naik.
Friday, September 10, 2010
And People Wonder Why I'm Not Flying Anymore
Almost as bad as my ACES 2...
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2010-09-10-airlinestanding10_ST_N.htm
By Charisse Jones, USA TODAY
Think your seat in coach is cramped? Take a look at the SkyRider.
The new airplane seat, to be unveiled next week at the Aircraft Interiors Expo Americas conference in Long Beach, would give passengers an experience akin to riding horseback.
They'd sit at an angle with no more than 23 inches between their perch and the seat in front of them — a design that could appeal to low-cost airlines that have floated the idea of offering passengers standing-room tickets on short flights.
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2010-09-10-airlinestanding10_ST_N.htm
By Charisse Jones, USA TODAY
Think your seat in coach is cramped? Take a look at the SkyRider.
The new airplane seat, to be unveiled next week at the Aircraft Interiors Expo Americas conference in Long Beach, would give passengers an experience akin to riding horseback.
They'd sit at an angle with no more than 23 inches between their perch and the seat in front of them — a design that could appeal to low-cost airlines that have floated the idea of offering passengers standing-room tickets on short flights.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Another Reason I'm Not Flying Anymore
Somebody buzzing around VFR forgot that politicians are fundraising *everywhere*.
If the signal was "buster", an authorization to go supersonic, he must have really been stupid (low altitude), or might have been a protester of a new sort.
Another reason to not buy the airplane, after winning the lottery.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/08/17/washington.jets.scrambled/index.html?hpt=Sbin
(CNN) -- Residents in Seattle, Washington, were shaken Tuesday afternoon by what sounded like explosions after two F-15s were dispatched in response to a report of a small plane that entered restricted airspace where President Barack Obama was campaigning for Sen. Patty Murray.
The rumblings -- caused by sonic booms from the jets -- rattled buildings, windows and nerves in the Puget Sound region, according to CNN affiliate KIRO. Viewers of the affiliate from as far away as Tacoma -- about 40 miles south of Seattle -- reported hearing the booms.
Dozens of residents called the city's 911 system, causing it to shut down in some areas for about an hour due to the flood of calls, Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff's Department told KIRO.
"Many house and car alarms have been set off that we will not be able to respond to," Troyer told the affiliate.
The jets were launched out of Portland, Oregon, and "were on afterburners the whole time," Allen Kenitzer of the Federal Aviation Administration told CNN.
The plane in question -- identified by the FAA as a Cessna 180 -- left the temporarily restricted airspace before the jets intercepted it, said John Cornelio of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
The pilot of the plane later landed it near Lake Washington, Kenitzer said.
The incident is under investigation.
If the signal was "buster", an authorization to go supersonic, he must have really been stupid (low altitude), or might have been a protester of a new sort.
Another reason to not buy the airplane, after winning the lottery.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/08/17/washington.jets.scrambled/index.html?hpt=Sbin
(CNN) -- Residents in Seattle, Washington, were shaken Tuesday afternoon by what sounded like explosions after two F-15s were dispatched in response to a report of a small plane that entered restricted airspace where President Barack Obama was campaigning for Sen. Patty Murray.
The rumblings -- caused by sonic booms from the jets -- rattled buildings, windows and nerves in the Puget Sound region, according to CNN affiliate KIRO. Viewers of the affiliate from as far away as Tacoma -- about 40 miles south of Seattle -- reported hearing the booms.
Dozens of residents called the city's 911 system, causing it to shut down in some areas for about an hour due to the flood of calls, Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff's Department told KIRO.
"Many house and car alarms have been set off that we will not be able to respond to," Troyer told the affiliate.
The jets were launched out of Portland, Oregon, and "were on afterburners the whole time," Allen Kenitzer of the Federal Aviation Administration told CNN.
The plane in question -- identified by the FAA as a Cessna 180 -- left the temporarily restricted airspace before the jets intercepted it, said John Cornelio of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
The pilot of the plane later landed it near Lake Washington, Kenitzer said.
The incident is under investigation.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Politicians And Aircraft Don't Mix Well
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/08/a-history-of-political-plane-crashes.php
Monday, November 9, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
